Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 40

A 2ND APRIL FOOL'S DAY?

 

At work today, I was told that this monthhas 2 April Fool's Days:the second?
Easter 
It was meant to hurt but itonly saddened me ...for the person speaking.
I am used to being mocked for my faith,
for being interrupted at mysolitary restaurant tablefor daring to say a silent prayer ofthanks for my food in public.


But Christians have a long history of being called fools.

From the Pharisees to sophisticated modern thinkers, the thought of there being an actual resurrection is mocked.

From Cadbury to Store windows, Easter Bunnies are all the rage.
Jesus is tastefully left out of sight.

More people believe in the paranormal  than they do in a personal God.

Many feel it is foolishness to believe in God.
I can understand that --
On the surface it seems foolish to meet hate with love
to feel there is a caring Godafter Covid 19 and hurricanes,
to think life can spring from death.

But isn't that what happenswhen crushed wheat is buried in the earth?

 The true spirit of Christ's teachingsis bruised but not gone.

Still, Easter holds a message for us all, religious or not.
It is a message of hope and reconciliation.

Even when met with mocking and hostility,Love offers us Life after Death,
More than that: a possibility of forgiveness  and a fresh start.
HAPPY EASTER MY FRIENDS
After my home burned, this song helped keep me going: 

G is for WORDS?

 "With words one man can make another blessed, or drive him to despair;

by words the teacher transfers his knowledge to the pupil; by words the speaker sweeps his audience with him and determines its judgments and decisions.

 Words call forth effects and are the universal means of influencing human beings.”
- Sigmund Freud

The shadows darkened around my table at Meilori's as Freud leaned towards me in his chair.  

"We come now to the letter G.  What occurs to you?"

"I think Words."

He straightened in his chair.  "Words?  At the letter G?"

"Well, actually I thought of GATE.  And words are the gate through which we enter the mind of those around us.  


With words we touch the thoughts of those with whom we wish to communicate, right?"

"Hfmmf."

I sighed,
"You loved literature and read William Shakespeare throughout your life.  


It's even been suggested that your understanding of human psychology was derived from his plays. 

So you know that words are indeed the gateway to the human psyche."


His eyes seemed to sink into his face.  

"Suggestions say more about the person making them than of the person who is their target." 

He waved his hand absently as if to chase away gnats.  "An astute observer does not need to suggest.  Human beings can keep no secrets."


He rolled his cigar in his fingers.

"They reveal their innermost selves with their clothes, with their twitches, with their unconscious mannerisms.  


Whatever humans do, they are expressing things about themselves to people who have eyes to see and ears to hear."


Freud snorted, "That is your true gateway, young man, and words are only a minor part of the whole of it." 

I started as another ghost sat down beside me.  

C.S. Lewis, a warm smile on his face.  


The smile on Freud's face, however, dropped like a lead weight.

From the distant poker table, Mark Twain chuckled, "This is going to be good."

"Good" wasn't exactly the word that occurred to me.

F IS FOR TRAUMDEUTUNG?

 “Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power.”

- Sigmund Freud

Now looking much younger, Freud tapped the floor with his cane, still holding the unlit cigar in his fingers.  

I studied the man who was likewise studying me.

Freud couldn’t cure himself of the very complexes and defense mechanisms he coined. 

He claimed anxiety came from the unconscious and so to reveal and analyze led to a cure. 

But this depended on a person’s willingness to change 

and although Freud exhibited many neuroses he was unable or unwilling to cure himself. 

His terms to describe human behavior are used every day 

(passive-aggressive, repression, denial, defense mechanisms, ego, the conscious and unconscious) 

and many came from his personal experience.

"We are now at F," he said.  "What occurs to you at that?"

"Traumdeutung."

Freud closed his eyes as Mark Twain, eavesdropping though still playing poker at a distant table, began to chuckle.  

"Roland, yours is the most Byzantine mind I have ever run across."

He tapped his cane harder on the floor.  "Traumdeutung means dream interpretation and literally has nothing to do with the letter F."

I shook my head.  "But it does."

"Because of your 1899 publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, you became the Founder of a single school of thought.  

Rarely does one individual become a founder of something like that."

I nodded my head.  
"By 1902, you were hosting weekly discussions at your home in Vienna. 

These informal meetings would eventually grow to become the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society."

I nodded firmly, "So F is for you, Freud the Founder of Psychoanalysis." 

Freud muttered under his breath, and Mark Twain called out, 

"Did I just hear you use the F word, Freud, old chum?  I thought Roland was supposed to be doing the free associating?"

E is for EASY MONEY

 “The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.”

- Sigmund Freud




The ghost of Mark Twain had flitted away to play poker with Oscar Wilde and Eudora Welty.  

All three cheated terribly, but they played for the conversation not the money.

After all, being ghosts, where would they spend it?

I wondered why Freud was so intent on this Free Association with me.

Jung thought Freud analyzed others to avoid his own problems.  

Jung once demanded of him: “Who has the neurosis?”

 Freud’s daughter, Anna, agreed, 

noting that the very act of being a psychotherapist is a defense from your own neuroses.
 
Now, fully white in both hair and beard, Freud sighed, 

"Finally, perhaps we can get some serious exploring done in your unconscious."

He adjusted his glasses more firmly on his nose.  

"We are at E.  What occurs to you immediately upon hearing that letter?"

"Easy Money," I smiled.

Freud fought a grimace.  "Even though he is not here, Twain is still contaminating the process."

"I mean it.  I thought of Easy Money."

"And why do you believe you thought of that phrase, Roland?" 

"By 1925, your fame had spread so widely that movie producer Samuel Goldwyn offered you, whom he called the 'greatest love specialist in the world,' 

$100,000 to write or consult on a film script about 'the great love stories of history.'"

I shook my head in wonder. 

"Yet, in spite of that eye-popping offer, you turned it down as you did a $25,000 offer the year before from the publisher of the Chicago Tribune 

to psychoanalyze the famed criminals Leopold and Loeb as they awaited their sensational murder trial"

I scratched my chin. "Why did you turn them both down?"

Freud smiled sadly.  "Because there is nothing easy to Easy Money, Roland."

D is For? and MARK TWAIN HELPS WITH IWSG post

 

“In the depths of my heart I can’t help but be convinced that my dear fellow-men, with a few exceptions, are worthless.”
 - Sigmund Freud

Laughing as tears rolled down his cheeks, the ghost of Mark Twain sat down beside me again. 

 "It was as delightful as watching a train wreck listening to you as old Coke Head's eyes got bigger and bigger."

Freud said, "Would you stop calling me that!"

Stone-faced, he turned to me.  "We are at D, young sir."

Twain chuckled, 

"As in your book,  Interpretation of Dreams -- you know the one you considered your 'most significant work.'  

It produced little fanfare when it was published in 1899. Only 351 copies of “The Interpretation of Dreams” were sold in its first six years, 

and a second edition was not published until 1909."

Mark Twain took a deep drag on his cigar and blew the smoke in Freud's face.  "You know, that book?"

I knew that Twain felt Freud a fraud, for the man borrowed the "talking cure" from the physician named Josef Breuer 

who was treating a woman named Bertha Pappenheim for a number of ailments.

It was she who coined the term "talking cure" for the therapy she was receiving from Dr. Breuer.

Worse to Mark, Freud had taken the concept of "Free Association" from a writer of all people!

 "The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days" by Ludwig Börne.

In it, Börne suggested that a good way to generate ideas was 

to concentrate on various topics, and over the next three days write down anything that came to mind.

Freud had read the essay while a young student.  

But why was Mark being so contrary right now?

 The answer hit me, and I smiled, "Defense by Distraction."

He was defending me as I had defended him.

 Freud glowered at Twain.  "This exercise is for Roland's benefit."

Mark chuckled, "You wouldn't be so quick to say that if you had been on Roland's side of your eyes a minute ago!"

Ghost of Mark Twain here to spell the boy for IWSG:
https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/  
"I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them."
- Mark Twain

Ghost of Mark Twain here:

I try not to criticize that Stephanie Meyer gal to Roland, but her books madden me so that I cannot conceal my frenzy from him.

I have to stop every time I begin.

Every time I read any of those Twilight/Good Night books, I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Then, I realize that gal ain't dead yet.  Maybe I can convince the ghost of Lovecraft to fix that for me, don't you know?

I just flat couldn't finish any of those DEAD books by that filly Charlaine Harris.  If she would listen, I would tell her that a successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.


Not that any woman no how ever listened to me when I was talking sense.


That her books sell don't necessarily make them good.

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail.

The trouble with most fiction of today is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.

I know you friends of Roland are more open to listening than those two fillies, so I have a few hints at how to write yourselves a good novel --

1.) Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

2.) And while we are on the topic of editing --  NEVER POLISH THE FIRST CHAPTER UNTIL THE LAST ONE IS WRITTEN.

3.) A novel is like a young'un -- it grows in ways you never planned.  Just type it out chapter by chapter, letting the growing pains take you where they will.

4.) A novel is like life -- things happen, new ideas suggest themselves, and intriguing possiblities arise.  Throw them into the soil of your novel, you will be surprised at what the harvest will be.

5.) A novel to be novel must be novel.  Don't have the dog wag his tail.  Have his tail wag him.

6.) A novel is a dog house --

     So is your house going to hold a small, a medium, a lagre dog -- or just for the husband when he is thrown out by his wife?

     The size of the "dog" will dictate how you go about structuring your "house" (novel).

7.) Plots are limited.  Characters are limitless.  So always begin with the characters.

     Your novel will shine, not by what you have going on in it, but by the breath you breathe into your characters.

8.) The characters you develop depend on who you are.  Hemingway was Hemingway.  Shakespeare was everybody else.

Remember:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

C IS FOR COCAINE OR IS THAT CIGAR?

 “I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all.”  

 - Sigmund Freud


Freud stroked his chin beard.  "Young man, I asked you -- what is the first thing you think when I say C?"

"Cancer" I said quickly and went cold.  

The word seemed to hang in the air in glowing neon.

Man, he suffered with 34 operations over long years struggling with that disease.

"Ah, no! I meant cigars," I sputtered in a panic, immediately making things worse.

I groaned inwardly.  

He had tried to quit to stave off cancer but never could despite his knowledge of psychology. 

He had quit for over a year but finally went back to it full time.

My mind groped blindly for something else to say.  "I mean cocaine." 

Ever have one of those times when the more you tried digging your way out of a hole, you only dug yourself in deeper?

Freud loved cocaine so much that he discussed it openly with his fiancé, and performed experiments centered on cocaine with himself as the subject. 

It took long, painful months to wean himself off it.

Freud pursed his lips. 

"You are a veritable walking parapraxis, young man.  

You resent what you perceive as my disapproval of your idol and so your unconscious lashes out at me in what you believe will hurt me."

I sighed, 

"Perhaps, I wanted so badly NOT to hurt you with those C words, they were the only things that leapt out at me."

Freud gave me an Apache face and said, “Where id is, there shall ego be.”  

He cocked his head at me expectantly.  "Shall we proceed to D?"

B is for BOXES

 

“No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.” 
 - Sigmund Freud


I was watching the ghost of Mark Twain wandering off in search of pretty young girls with innocent, trusting eyes. 

I looked back to the ghost of Freud.

He looked younger.  Meilori's was like that. 

Few ghosts remained the same during a conversation with them.

His lips wrinkled as if expecting trouble.  "All right, young man, what first enters your mind when I say B?"

"Boxes," I said.

He glared at the retreating form of Mark Twain. 

"No wonder he left.  He was afraid I would upbraid him for contaminating this exercise!"

"It's more like braids than upbraids, sir.  He's after Alice Liddell over there."

Freud sighed, "The man's obsession with his Angel Fish Club saddens me."

"I know it might strike you as a perversion, sir.  But it isn't. 

Towards the end of his life, he suffered quite a lot of loss.  In 1896 his favorite daughter, Susy, died. 

His wife passed away in 1904 and a second daughter, Jean, followed in 1909."

I looked sadly at Twain making Alice Liddell giggle. 

"So he created a club of sorts made up of surrogate granddaughters he called the Angel Fish Club."

Mark Twain and Dorothy Quick 
Freud glowered, "You are naïve."

"I choose to think of it as believing the best of a friend."

Freud snorted as if to blow away irritating gnats. 

"What is this nonsense of you thinking Boxes when I say B?"

I said, "You left the Library of Congress 153 boxes of your correspondence.   Of those, 19 boxes can’t be opened until 2020, 2050 or 2057.

Another 8 boxes are sealed forever.  Why would you give them boxes that could not be opened?  And why on earth would they accept them?"

Freud showed me his teeth in what wasn't in the same galaxy as a real smile.  "Why indeed?"

He showed me a mortician's face.  "Shall we proceed to C?"

WHY YOUR READERS SHOULD WANT TO HANG OUT WITH YOUR BOOK CHARACTERS

 

SHARED INTERESTS

Readers will come back to your book just for the fellowship of like mind, similar interests.

WARM COMFORT OF THE KNOWN

Deep down we are like little children who want to be read the same bedtime story that is comforting because it is familiar. fun. and the end is known ... unlike with most of daily life.

SHARED LAUGHTER

Renewing old friendships and remembering good old  times.

I re-read old SPENSER FOR HIRE and LONGMIRE mysteries ... not for the mystery but for the friendships and witty banter that makes each page crackle.

COMARADERIE

I've been emailed by several readers that they listen over and over to the campfire telling of ghost stories

 by Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Howard Carter, and Abigail Adams in my audio Egyptian fantasy, THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Stars-Bleed-at-Midnight/dp/B01B20VE1A/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Do you make your charactersenticing enough to be revisited?

WRITE WHAT YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW _ TALES OF MEILORI'S

 

Tonight, the exterior of Meilori's

resembled the LaLaurie Manson,

 

the site of the gruesome torture and murder of countless slaves by their owners,

 

Delphine LaLaurie and her physician husband.

 

Perhaps that is why the shadows around me had sharper than usual teeth.

Since Meilori's exterior was what it was tonight, 

I was surprised when the ghost of James Baldwin sat down opposite me at my rune-carved table.

Maybe I shouldn't have been since it was his birthday two weeks ago.

Besides, Mr. Baldwin never shied away from confronting racism 

as the New York waitress who refused him service as a teen found out 

when he threw a glass of water at her, shattering the mirror behind her.


He said, "Wilde speaks highly of you.  

He suggested I speak of writing to you and those who drop by this little platform you have."

{Courtesy Carl Van Vechten}
WRITING IS DISCOVERY
"When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. 

The whole language of writing for me   is finding out  what you don’t want to know,   what you don’t want to find out. 
But something forces you to anyway."


SO MANY LIE TO YOU;  DO NOT BE ONE OF THEM 
"Self-delusion, in the service of no matter what small or lofty cause, is a price no writer can afford.

 His subject is himself and the world and it requires every ounce of stamina 

he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are.

No one knows your name ... not even yourself if you are honest about it."


DO NOT BE SELF-BLINDED
 "One writes out of one thing only: one’s own experience. 

Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, 

sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. 

This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art."


DO NOT LOSE YOUR COURAGE
 "I find writing gets harder as time goes on. 

I’m speaking of the working process, which demands a certain amount of energy and courage (though I dislike using the word), and a certain amount of recklessness.

 Every form of writing is difficult, no one is easier than another. 

They all kick your ass. None of it comes easy."


TOUCH ONE HEART;  CHANGE THE WORLD
 "If there is no moral question, there is no reason to write. 

I’m an old‐fashioned writer and, despite the odds, I want to change the world. 

What do I hope to convey?
 Well, joy, love, the passion to feel how our choices affect the world . . . that’s all."


TRUTH IS YOUR COMPASS
"You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.

 I certainly can’t imagine art for art’s sake . . .

 that’s a European approach, which never made any sense to me. 

 I think what you have to do, which is the difficult thing about a writer, 

is avoid slogans. 
You have to have the guts to protest the slogan, no matter how noble it may sound. 

It always hides something else; the writer should try to expose what it hides."


 REMEMBER HEMINGWAY

"Write.  Find a way to keep alive  and write. 
There is nothing else to say. 

If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; 

if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. 

What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.

 I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: 

To last, as Hemingway says,  and get my work done."

WHAT IS REAL? A TALE OF MEILORI'S

 Meilori's felt eerie tonight ... more so than usual for a haunted French Quarter night club.

One, there was not one ghost in sight.
Nor any of my characters who people mynovel and this club.
Science would say I was delusional ... many of my friends at work would agree.
I stiffened. 
Above me, through the bronze-hued mists, Perry Como's mellow voice sang "All Through the Night."

In my Dickens' homage, Beware the Jade Christmas, its was the Seraphim Provocateur, Darael, who had done the same thing for his human friend, Lucas.
 I turned the cream and rose wallpapered corner and froze.
An escalator ... with the only entity from a recent horror movie that unsettled me.
I forced out of a dry throat, "DayStar, I don't mind you think me stupid, but I do mind when you treat me as if I were."
DayStar? Don't ask. You'll sleep better. Let's just say he sees through your shadow ,,, and laughs.

A hollow chuckle rumbled beside me. I looked to my right ... the side away from my heart. 
Darael.
"No, not the Dark One. You are much too much a minnow for him to want to fry. I suspect that is why Elohim has kept you off the Best Seller list."
"What?"
"You want the treatment that Rowling has gotten of late ... or worse."
I thought about arguing with him, but I was afraid he would tell me what that worse could be.
"Where is everybody?"
"The ghosts know that Elohim is coming here soon."
"What? Meilori's?"
"This Mortal Plane."
"H-How soon?"
"Define 'Soon.'
I sighed. Darael was like this. I thought about another tack.
"Where are my characters?"
Darael gestured grandly about us. "Your friend, Michael, believes all the world, the universe even, is a Cosmic Simulation."
"Is it?"
He flashed his paper-cut grin. "You still expect a straight answer from me? I admire your optimism."
He smiled dryly. "I will demonstrate why you should never ask a direct question of a Seraphim Provocateur ... and actually answer."

"Ever since the philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed in the Philosophical Quarterly that the universe and everything in it might be a simulation, 

there has been intense public speculation and debate about the nature of reality."

"Physicist Frank Wilczek has argued that there’s too much wasted complexity in our universe for it to be simulated. 

Building complexity requires energy and time. Why would a conscious, intelligent designer of realities waste so many resources into making our world more complex than it needs to be?"

He flashed his paper-cut grin, pointing an accusing finger at me. "The Answer is quite simply really. You are to blame."

"What? Me? How?" 

"I see confusion limits your vocabulary, Son of Adam."

"Not just you, of course. But any author of talent, being shaped by the Finger of the Creator, can bring worlds into being themselves. 

Conan Doyle, John D. MacDonald, Hemingway, even minnow You."

He shuddered. "Even that racist Lovecraft."

"Midnight likes him."

"That furry menace would. If you write this up in a post. I wonder what your friends will think?"

 

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